After a month of playing .500 ball (8-7 in January) the Pistons start off February hosting the Milwaukee Bucks who had a dismal month (2-13) in addition to losing their all star guard Michael Redd early in January.

If we can lay the smack down on VC and Kidd we can destroy the Redd-less bucks. Sheed should be able to destroy anyone they put on him and Bogut doesnt have the smarts to stop Webber from getting some good looks and passing lanes. BBBBBillups and RIIIIIIIIP should have big games after being named all stars, and maybe Tayshaun will step it up to prove one day he can be one.

Pistons came out flat, lesser opponent and home court, these guys were just trading baskets and going through the motions.

2nd quarter things get interesting. Flip rests several starters, but the bench is a mess. Rip and Tayshaun used over Lindsey at the point, Hunter played off guard and wasn't asked to run the offense.

Maxiell got some significant time but stank. He was low energy, lousy at establishing any kind of rebound position, and blew yet another dunk. The dunk he definitely should have made. This is getting to be a bad habit.

Sheed and Webber helped to balance out over-Billups-izing the ball, Delfino covered wee little Earl Boykins, and surprising did quite a good job at it.

Dan Gadzuric of the Bucks beat up on Antonio McDyess, so Sheed has taken it upon himself to make Gadzuric his personal female dog.

Rip moving well got banged up good one time. Tayshaun ok, sad to see Rueben Patterson hammering him, but Tay's light in the pants and in bad need of a home cooked meal for the love of pete.

Billups was his usual self. A wonderful talent who makes some boneheaded plays. For every bad play CB made, he made an equally excellent one.

Should be an exciting second half. We have racked up fouls on Villaneuva and Gadzuric. But we have to stop their 3 pointers. The Bucks have 5 trey bombs so far.

Pistons had a lot more energy in the second half. Tayshaun Prince Cowboy'd up and grabbed a lot of offensive boards from his own misses (and others).

Jason Maxiell turned up his effort level and got some nice results.

Surprisingly, Nazr Mohammed got some playing time when Andrew Bogut went off on Chris Webber for 8 points in the 3rd. Nazr succeeded in slowing down Bogut and triggering two fastbreaks with long bomb passes. Pretty decent effort from Nasty.

McDyess picked up two techs and got ejected, and Sheed also received a tech. Sheed was totally mugged by two players and didn't get a call, but showed some self-restraint and took himself out of the game before he earned himself an ejection.

For the record, this was a lousy refereeing crew again, featuring the goofy smurf Garretson. When Garretson is the ref the Pistons always struggle with calls. He's a total weiner.

Sheed now has 14 techs btw.

Great defense down the stretch helped closed this one out despite the Pistons almost giving the game back several times on miscues.

Kudos to the coach for using Nazr, sticking with Maxiell when he was sluggish and getting through to Rip regarding technicals. This was far from a perfect effort, but we should take it and be happy.

Now we just need to find a way to involve Chris Webber in the second half passing attack.

Boring game. The Pistons were unable to get consistently impressive play against a Bucks team missing their Piston-killer All-Star and another starter.

Flip showed mercy by limiting Hunter's minutes, but at the expense of playing the starters the entire game.

Billups: dominated this game... shot, drove, posted, and passed... decent defense
Hamilton: shot well... good defense
Prince: 44 minutes of not much... on defense, he got caught in no-man's land roaming around trying to double-team... generally good man-to-man defense, especially on switches onto guards... was manhandled by Patterson near the basket... gave up at least five offensive rebounds... had some nice Moses Malone imitations when he noticed he was being guarded by a six-foot nobody named Charlie Bell
Wallace: was fouled a number of times on the block with no call... missed some open shots... defense and rebounding effort good... passed well... excellent screens
Webber: showed just how slow he really is... marginal impact on the game... got abused by Bogut and pulled for Nazr Mohammed for defensive purposes (!!!)... not much rebounding... set soft screens... some nice passes
Delfino: missed two wide-open shots... stalled a possession with overdribbling... good man-to-man defense both at the top and in the post... oversagged as usual on team defense... decent rebounding
Hunter: did his best Carlos Arroyo imitation... that's Arroyo on a bad day
McDyess: didn't do much
Maxiell: played out of control... got to the line, though... made some uncontested dunks...
Mohammed: good defense, rebounding, and an excellent outlet pass

Lesson 1: CWebb will do some great things here this season, but he really isn’t a center and a conventional back to the basket big man will expose him.

Lesson 2: With big men prone to picking up techs, now may not be the best time to trade Nazr Mohammed. Six may not be too many.

The first quarter is a seesaw low energy affair with neither team really clicking. Although Bogut isn’t scoring as efficiently as he will in the third, he is pretty much able to get what he wants against Webber. The Pistons may need to put in a scheme that does something they haven’t done since before Ben Wallace, double a man in the post. Rasheed is very active early, getting boards and assists, setting good screens, and actually calling “glass” before each of his bankers. The first ends ominously for the Pistons with Maxiel getting stuffed on a last second dunk attempt.

The Bucks start the second strongly forcing a Pistons timeout in the first couple of minutes. Shortly thereafter the Pistons botch their second fast break of the night. A couple more Bucks points and another Pistons timeout and Billups reenters the game. The Pistons go on a little run to retake the lead and go up by three after a Wallace block. Delfino is very active on the boards and on the defensive end of the floor in the quarter. He plays the remainder of the second after entering around the ten minute mark and finishes the Pistons scoring in the half with back to back layups.

The Bucks don’t take a free throw in the first half and commit nine turnovers. The Pistons shoot 8-9 from the line with only five turnovers.

The second half start is all Bogut, scoring five points over Webber. That makes 13 points on 6 for 10 shooting for Bogut with 8 boards. Rasheed picks up a tech and then yells “I don’t want that” when Villaneuva is called for a foul on the next possession. The game turns though on the forgotten man, Nazr Mohammed, who comes in and basically takes Bogut out of the game. In the interim McDyess manages to pick up two techs and the Bucks have nearly as free throws from technicals as from fouls. Mohammed throws two long outlet passes both leading to Pistons hoops. The Pistons finish the third on an 11-2 run with the Bucks going 0 for 8. Although he doesn’t score, it was good to see Rip tossing the old Ben Wallace lob to Maxiel near the end of the quarter. The Pistons lead after three by ten, 72-62.

The Bucks begin the fourth with four quick points forcing another Pistons timeout. The Pistons are 0 for 9 from the three point line. Rasheed returns and continues a very good floor game, getting a steal and then hitting the Pistons first three of the night after a Bucks long gun. He chatters a bit more at the refs after picking up a foul, prompting either Cowens or Porter to tell him to quiet down, to which Sheed replies between two Bucks free throws “Ball don’t lie! I ain’t worried about him. Leave me alone.” Prince who to this point has had a good but quiet game takes over on the offensive boards. Billups backs down Boykins for the and1, and a Sheed three around a handful of Maxiel dunks sends the crowd for the exits. Maxiel gets a sign of things to come when two Bucks mug him on a dunk attempt late in the fourth. He hits the free throws and then throws down a massive dunk to end the game.

Six Pistons score in double figures and they outrebound the Bucks by 4.

Right from the start, we were having shades of the same problem from the first meeting between these two teams, them scoring inside too much. For a stretch in the 2nd half, Webber was scored on repeatedly by Bogut. Patterson routinely bulled in on Tay. Rasheed guarded the quicker Villanueva and did fine there, but we really needed his size and length defending Bogut. Its a shame we can't clone Sheed, so we would have two of the very best post defenders around.

Mohammed came in for Webber for quite a spell in the 2nd half. This slowed Bogut, but it was as much us going to more double teams against him than anything. We got the usual bad defensive rotation from Mohammed, but hey, we did ok, at least for quite a while, with Mohammed in the game.

It got down to a two point lead late in the game. About 3 minutes to go. Billups drove Boykins and made the and 1 to pump the lead back to 5. Plus, Saunders brought in Maxiell for some D, and we finish with like a 12-4 run or something like that. Webber was not too good a fit for this game. Yes, he started with some good passing (two early assists) and yes he countered some of the abuse from Bogut with a pair of jumpers off glass made, but his defense left us very vulnerable inside. PS-I am very surprised Dale Davis was not called into this game early.

You know how after a tech gets called, they usually let the player rant a bit-the league don't apparently like Dyess, he got a 2nd tech real fast and was out of there late 3rd quarter. Which was a good thing, because apparently Flip Saunders was back to his old tricks, tyring to ice JMAX after he had just had a good game. JMAX did not tear up or anything in his 4 minutes or so in the first half, but then again, isn't Saunders paying attention at all? JMAX just might take some time to heat up some games. Keep him in the whole 2nd quarter. Without the two techs on Dyess, we probably lose this game. JMAX was huge in the 4th quarter.

Tay had it going pretty good on offense, and tore down about 8 offensive boards. Rip as usual had his shot going, scoring inside a lot early in the game as well. CB scored here and there, especially on Boykins, and of course as I mentioned one of those times was pretty huge.

Sheed scored in the post some, and made a couple of timely 3's. Can't complain about the two he made, because he was wide open and shot in rythm.

Surprise, surprise, Delfino covered speedy little Boykins as well as anyone. But maybe he was tired out a bit doing that, cause he missed all his outside shots. He did have a fast break layup, and an offensive rebound putback.

Hunter got to play, for what purpose is beyound me. Yes, Delfino can and did play point tonight. Hunter did not really, but why was he in the game at all? Certainly Delfino is a much better defender at shooting guard. Guess you can't play Delfino everywhere-so play Amir and JMAX at small forward already. Milwaukee sure made a lot of hay tonight with Patterson, a fairly big guy, at small forward.

Dyess made another outside shot, continuing that trend, but did not play a whole lot in this game. Sheed for some reason was brought back way too early in the 2nd quarter-something about needing more defense I suppose.

Kind of interesting since Orlando and Detroit just swapped opponents Orlando completely overwhelmed the Nets, from start to finish, after mauling Milwaukee badly last game. We beat NJ badly too, but struggled against Miwaukee something fierce. The biggest difference-Bogut stands not a snowballs chance in hades of scoring on Darko.

Still a good win, close or not, and indeed, you know, if we had started JMAX in this one, it never would have been close. Milwaukee is just not that good a team. When I complain about what the coach could have done different in a game, its not always coming from negativity. Its often about hope, how much better we can be yet. Keep the faith. GO PISTONS!!!!!

The Bucs played us tough, but finally some key plays in crunch time and Pistons win going away. Naz came of the bench to spark a 3rd qtr run along with two nice blocks and two court length passes. He did't get the assists, but both passes led to scores, A Maxi Dunk and a FT by Tay.

The Brahma was in full effect hitting his Ft's dunking and hitting jumpers. No blocks and only 2 boards, but still he did his part to help in the win. Tay got a double-double and was a force on the offensive end in the second half.

The game was tight in the first half when CB went out with 2 fouls near the end of the first qtr. Hunter came in and the pace and offense slowed to a snail pace. When CB came back in he hit a couple of jumpers and we closed out the half with a 3 pt lead.

The lead was extended to 10 by the end of the third based on the play by Naz. Max and CB, but with hunter running the show to start the 4th, bucks run off 6 straight. Flips yanks him, but bucks pull within 2 before order is restored. Joe you got to do something here...

Two victories in a row and back to tied with the Wizards again for EC lead. Need to put together a streak of 5 or 6 games to show that we are back in control.

I'll take an ugly win over a pretty loss any day of the week. Once again the bench is instrumental in nailing down a win. Is Maxiell a beast or what? If he ever learns to finger roll he's going to be a dangerous man but he's just driven to dunk, I've never seen a player with a mission for mayhem like him. I always feel optimistic when Carlos comes in. In the first half Carlos comes in when the Pistons are down six and they end the half up three, so he played a part. Lindsey Hunter is just aging before my eyes, he brings the offense to a screeching halt with his dribbling and running the clock down. Surely the Pistons can find a back-up PG with some of our trade bait -- Nazr (nice showcase game for him), Flip "nailed to the bench" Murray and even Dale Davis. Dale was deactivated for this game for missing the shoot-around today. Whassup with that? I remember reading an article about Maxey where they quoted his mother about his being driven to be the best basketball player. It was something like "Jason eats, sleeps and craps basketball", I thought that was really such an earthy way of putting it but it seems to be true.

prince has been grabbin more boards lately, nice. every friday when i go to this particular bar to watch the game, something weird happens. this time it was dice getting booted and sheed benching himself. was kind of distracted...basically looked like a boring game. nice to see maxiell beasting it up.

from the recap, looks like dale might not be happy with his reduced minutes...

"Davis, who is frustrated after losing most of his playing time to Chris Webber, said that he didn't sleep through his alarm clock. "I didn't set it," he said before the game."